COMPLAINT POLICY
We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards.

If you have a complaint, write to us with the details. Address your letter to our Client Care Officer, who is responsible for client care. Our Client Care Officer is Ms Serpil Ersan.

What will happen next?

  1. We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain the details set out. You can expect to receive our letter within 4 working days of us receiving your complaint.
  2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint. We will do this within a day of receiving your complaint.
  3. 3. We will acknowledge your reply to our acknowledgement letter and confirm what will happen next. You can expect to hear from us within three days of your reply.
  4. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps:
  • We may ask the person who acted for you to reply to your complaint within five days;
  • We may examine the reply and the information in your complaint file. We may then ask the person who acted for you for more information. This will take up to three days from receiving the reply and the file.
  1. We will invite you to meet our Client Care Officer to discuss and, it is hoped, resolve your complaint. We will do this within three days of receiving all the details we need from the member of staff who acted for you.
  2. Within two days of the meeting we will write to you to confirm what took place and any suggestions we have agreed with you.
  3. If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will happen within five days of us completing the investigation.
  4. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:
  • Another member of the firm will review our Client Care Officer’s decision within ten days;
  • We will ask our local Law Society or another local firm of solicitors to review your complaint within five days. We will let you know how long this process will take;
  • We will invite you to agree to independent mediation. We will let you know how long this process will take.
  1. We will let you know the result of the review within five days of the end of the review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.

If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.

If, at the conclusion of our complaints procedure you are still unsatisfied, you may refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman at:

  • legalombudsman.org.uk,
  • PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ
  • enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk.

Ordinarily, there is a time limit for doing this of one year from the act/omission or one year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint without taking advice from a third party, whichever is later. Further information can be found on the Legal Ombudsman website.

If you believe that there has been a breach of your personal information, please inform us as a matter of urgency. We will then aim to notify the necessary regulatory body or information provider within 24 hours of such breach, investigate and provide you with a response within 14 days.

Please contact our Data Protection Office if you have any concerns or complaints about the way in which your personal data has been handled. Alternatively, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner officer.

You can also contact the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (“SRA”) if you consider we have breached the rules issued by the SRA (http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page). Please note that the SRA are concerned with breaches of professional standards. The SRA is a regulator and is not responsible for adjudicating client complaints.

CONTACT DETAILS

Our full details are:

Full name of legal entity: Ersan & Co

Name and title of DPO: Hatice Sarman, Senior Paralegal

Email address: hsarman@ersans.co.uk

Telephone number: 02083427070

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please contact us in the first instance.